A Growing Demand for ISEB in the IT Testing Market - Are you Qualified?

Confidence is returning to the contract market and my clients’ expectations have quite rightly increased. With a surplus of candidates available, hiring managers are demanding the very best test resource the market can offer.

As well as asking that perspective candidates meet at least 80% of the required skills, I have found that managers are now, more than ever, requiring testers to have passed at least a foundation level of the ISEB accreditation.

Within the testing population, I estimate that there is a 60/40 split in favour of people successfully passing the exam. However, a common reply to Are you ISEB certified? from those within the uncertified camp is simply, “I have never needed to take it, I have over X amount of years of commercial experience.”

I would really like to know people’s thoughts, firstly on the ISEB Qualification itself:

Is it worthwhile? What are the positives and are there any negatives?

In terms of the job market, having the qualifications won’t hurt your chances. There are a number of testers who are completely new to the profession and I recognise that the foundation ISEB is used as a basic introduction of new testers to the testing arena, giving them knowledge of basic terms, some introduction to main practices, and types of available tools. I also have clients that will prefer candidates with the Practioner level rather than the Foundation level and if you picked up some new knowledge in the Foundation course then you'll probably pick up some more in the Intermediate/Practioner courses. But that is not to say that you can't pick up the knowledge in other ways or that obtaining the qualification will make you a better tester…

Which raises the following questions:

Do ISEB certifications represent an accurate assessment of ability?

Do you think that if you are running a business as a testing contractor it should be a pre- requisite to take at least the foundation level?

If you don’t have an ISEB qualification, should you be disqualified from consideration or acceptance for a job in software testing?

From a recruiters point of view it definitely gives me a certain amount of confidence when presenting an ISEB qualified candidate to a client. However, I would really like to learn more about your own views and personal experiences on this subject. All comments welcome!

Speak Soon,

Mark